generating reports

[kr4k3n]

I have data in several text files that I need to print out multiple reports with. This is a billing system with customer information in one text file, and balances in another. How can I access those text files to create my reports?

[DataMiser]

That depends on the format of the text files, you may be able to connect to them as if they were a table in a database or you may have to treat them as text or binary. Itr also depends on what tool you are going to use to create the report.

Bottom line is you need to give more info to get a good answer.

[kr4k3n]

Well, the text files are comma delimited. And the help I am looking for IS the tool I need to use. I've never had to print more than one record at a time and now i find myself needing to print as many as 88 records. What i need to know is the best way to print all valid records, (those that actually contain data) with the click of a button. What I have found so far is using a data object to load a driver to read the text file but I am struggling with the code to open and print the objects. Is there an easier method I am missing? How can I connect them?

[DataMiser]

Well you could use the Text Driver for the ADODB connection then open a recordset that would contain the data. I assume the data report tools included with VB6 would let you map the report to the recordset. I have actually never used the Vb data report nor the data environment so I am not sure if you would need to use the data environment to connect to the file then create the report with the data connection there, I use a 3rd party tool called Active Reports which works very well and allows you to use any RS object ADO DAO RDO but it is not cheap.

You could also of course read the file and manually print the data which in some cases may be the best option really depends on what you need to do report wise.

You could import the data to a MDB file and create the report from there, If you have Crystal Reports then you shoudl be able to do it with that but again I always use Active Reports so I do not know what the others are capable of, pretty much the only other report engine I use is the one built into Access and I do not use it very much.

[kr4k3n]

Ok i got crystal reports 11.5 installed. Got the report designed and it pulls up the info but when i try to access it from VB I get a database connection error. so how do I create a database connection now to a text file..